Playing Grace

by Osmond, Hazel

  He seemed tired and subdued. There was no sign of the rock-kicking Tate. He lowered himself on to the edge of Gilbert’s bed.

  ‘How’s he doing?’

  ‘Been quiet for a while. Apart from the snoring. No more vomiting anyway.’

  ‘Gonna feel like crap tomorrow.’ With a movement that was almost tender, he rearranged the sheet and blanket around Gilbert’s shoulders and Grace looked away. ‘Should have known Gilb wouldn’t have had a duvet,’ he said, but when she expected him to laugh at the end of the sentence, he didn’t.

  She remained quiet and they sat there with only the noise of Gilbert’s breathing between them and the light from the bedside table shining on them.

  ‘You want me to call for a cab?’ he said after a while, still looking at Gilbert.

  ‘No. I’ll stay for a bit longer.’

  He raised his head and his expression brightened. ‘You will? That’s good of you, I mean, I don’t expect—’

  ‘Violet doesn’t want me to go.’ He looked quizzical and she took great pleasure in adding, ‘She doesn’t want to be left alone with a strange man.’

  ‘Strange?’ He rolled his eyes. ‘She didn’t think I was too strange to go through Rhode Island with her. And Maryland. And Connecticut. And Vermont. Jeez, I thought we were gonna do the full fifty.’

  ‘Plus Washington DC?’

  ‘Yeah, smart ass, plus Washington D.C.’ She realised that, unwittingly, she had come very close to flirting with him. She pretended that she needed to shift position in the chair and spent a bit of time flexing her foot and rearranging her blanket.

  Silence set in again, for a while, until she realised she hadn’t told him it was pretty pointless them both staying. He simply replied, ‘Doesn’t seem right, leaving you here.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, but I got Gilb into this state and you … well, you were the one told me to keep an eye on him. Poor Gilbert.’

  ‘He’ll be all right,’ she said, trying to chivvy him out of an expression that was doing unfortunate things to her ability to resist looking at him. ‘There’s no lasting damage done.’

  ‘I didn’t mean just about tonight. I meant … about Violet. No idea about her.’ He dropped his voice ‘She’s a sweetie, but boy …’ He seemed unsure how to finish the sentence for a few moments until he added, ‘She’s complicated. Must be difficult for him?’

  Grace made a neutral sounding noise, something between a ‘we-ll’ and an ‘umm’.

  ‘And you know anything about this Tony guy? Gilb mentioned him a lot, ’specially later on – well, while he could still speak. What’s that all about?’

  Grace tried the same neutral sound again and Tate watched her for a while. She expected that he was going to criticise her again for being too buttoned up, but he was smiling and she couldn’t help looking into his eyes. Warm, reaching out for her.

  ‘So … Tony?’ he prompted.

  ‘You’d have to ask Gilbert about that.’

  He was still smiling. ‘See, that’s what I like about you, Gracie. You’re still looking out for Gilb. Still watching his back. Covering his ass.’

  Gilbert shifted in the bed and muttered something, and Grace had the impression it might have been ‘if you’ll pardon the pun.’

  ‘Yeah. Loyalty’s good,’ Tate went on. ‘And keeping a secret. Well,’ he shot her a look, ‘keeping other people’s secrets.’

  ‘There really is no need for you to stay any longer.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘Don’t blame you for trying to get rid of me. Not gonna make you like me any better this, is it?’

  When she didn’t answer, he said, ‘I’m taking that as a no,’ and went quiet.

  The longer they sat there, the silence around them, everything dark outside the pool of light, the more she felt the intimacy of this shared watch, as if they were parents caring for a sick child.

  She was worrying away at this feeling when he surprised her by saying, ‘Fliss, she reminds me of someone else.’

  Grace tried to read his face. It looked innocent enough. ‘Really?’ she said, ‘I thought she was a one-off.’

  ‘Nope, got one just like her at home.’ He looked slightly sheepish. ‘My mom. Her and Fliss could have been separated at birth. My mom might even be more out there.’

  Grace sifted through that new piece of information and decided that another noncommittal noise would be the safest response.

  ‘Not gonna say anything, huh? Probably best – don’t know what to say about her myself a lot of the time.’ He was scrunching up strands of his hair with one hand as he talked. ‘She’s a free spirit, Mom.’

  Despite determining not to ask any questions, Grace said, ‘Is she an artist too?’

  Tate’s grin looked like an apology. ‘Kind of. Bit like my cousin George … you remember, the actor? Mom tries hard, got the temperament, but … Parents, eh?’ He stopped messing with his hair and did a theatrical palms-up shrug. ‘What can you do?’

  ‘And your dad?’

  ‘My dad grows apples and pumpkins.’

  She was so surprised that she couldn’t immediately respond to that. She tried to imagine Tate surrounded by red, shiny apples and orange pumpkins but could only see him smashing them with a hammer and getting someone to film it.

  ‘Sounds idyllic,’ she said off the top of her head, but knew immediately that she’d caused him pain.

  ‘Yeah, it was,’ he said, looking sadly at Gilbert but, from the expression on his face, seeing something else entirely. ‘Yeah, I remember it was. Still is, whenever I go back. See Dad. The rest of them. I mean, I don’t see myself as an apple farmer, but maybe when I’m older. Bit of land …’

  Grace realised she was now the one trying to fit the pieces together in the jigsaw. Then she reminded herself that she didn’t care about Tate, his mother, his father or their bloody apples.

  She heard Tate sigh. ‘You’re not gonna ask me what happened, are you? Is that ’cos you’re being polite, being English? Or you’re keeping me at arm’s length again?’ She opened her mouth to deny both, but he carried on, ‘Mom hooked up with a younger guy when I was ten. Left my dad and took me off to Chicago along with her.’ Tate regarded his boot. ‘Her and Dad never had much in common, except us kids. Oh, and a love of nature … although he was always kind of taming it while she was trying to be at one with it.’

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘Yup. I’m the runt of the litter. Left my sisters and brothers behind on the farm.’ When he saw Grace’s shocked expression he shrugged. ‘Says she could tell I was going to be an artist, not like the others who were gonna take after Dad. Says she was saving my spirit as much as hers.’ He pulled a face. ‘Drama junkie, Mom. Lovely, but a drama junkie.’

  ‘But your father: he didn’t just let her go, did he? With you?’ They were questions Grace had to get out there, although she wasn’t sure he would answer. He was sorting out Gilbert’s bedding again, but with a smoothing sweep of his hand over the blanket, he said, matter-of-factly, ‘Well, to be truthful I think it was a relief to him.’

  ‘I can see he might have felt that about her leaving, if they had nothing left in common, but about you?’

  ‘I was talking about me,’ he said, not meeting her gaze. ‘He didn’t know what to do with me. I stood out. I was crap at sports. I answered him back. I was starting to wear weird clothes.’ Tate stood up. ‘Still, we get on OK now when I go visit. And, hey, my new dads were cool. All of them. No harm done. You wanna coffee?’

  Why had he told her this? Was it another of his attempts to build a connection between the two of them that he could nip across? She couldn’t decide – the way he was getting himself to the door, head down, not making a clean movement of opening it wider, didn’t suggest that. It suggested he was embarrassed.

  He stopped on the threshold and said, out to the landing, ‘Just thought back over what I said … you know, I didn’t mean Fliss was exactly like Mom. I don’t want you to think I�
��m telling you she’s gonna do something crazy with that James guy.’

  ‘Jay.’

  ‘Yeah, Jay.’

  ‘Why did you tell me then?’ It came out sharper than she intended, probably because she knew her mother had already done something crazy with Jay.

  ‘Because I trust you,’ he said, still not turning around.

  ‘And you’re hoping I’ll do the same with you? Trust you back. Tell you something more about me?’

  ‘Jeez,’ he said softly, ‘give me a break here, Gracie.’ He turned to face her, his eyes and his hair, without the light on them, looking washed of any life. ‘Look, I’m miles from home, it’s the middle of the night, I’ve just got an old guy blitzed so bad he’s chucked up everything he’s ever eaten … I just felt the need, OK?’

  He exited sharply after that, leaving her to try to think of nothing, but she kept imagining him as a boy, knowing that his dad wouldn’t be coming to Chicago to get him back, having to get used to a new life and a new man. A few new men by the sound of it.

  And what about his brothers and sisters? Did he miss them when he left? Did they miss him? And he still told people he was from Rhode Island. Not Chicago …

  She brought her hand down on the arm of the chair. ‘Damn, he’s made me feel sorry for him now,’ she said out loud, and Gilbert moved his head from left to right a few times and his eyelids fluttered before he went right under again.

  She waited for Tate to come back upstairs with the coffee. And waited. Then she went downstairs and found him asleep on the sofa, his coat wrapped around him. Of course he’d be asleep on the sofa. She watched him from the doorway, saw how his chest rose and fell, and knew that if she had to draw a picture of the kind of man who she could fall for, it would be him. And if she had to draw a picture of the kind of man she should never fall for again, it would be him too.

  It was the first time she had allowed herself to think that objectively and it hit her as if it was something physical. He was the edge and she was tumbling over it again.

  Was all that brashness, all that confidence, something he’d hoisted on to himself when he was a boy?

  When she went upstairs again, she left the door of Gilbert’s room open and listened out for Tate’s footsteps with a sense of anticipation. It was frightening, but hadn’t it been inevitable, this pull towards him? It was going to end badly, she knew that, just as she had known that Gilbert’s trip out on the town would end badly. But what could she do faced with that body and that enthusiasm, and now that hint that underneath there was more substance?

  She registered that it was four o’clock in the morning, but the next time she was aware of being awake, it was six and she was feeling frowsy and crunched up, and if she didn’t shift she was going to be late for work. Gilbert was on his side, still snoring.

  She struggled to free herself from the blanket and saw a note fall from it to the carpet: Money on side for the cab last night. Thanks again for coming to the rescue. More than I deserved. PS You ought to sleep more often. It suits you.

  She checked on Gilbert one last time before executing a quick and silent face wash in the bathroom, but this morning the tiles appeared too much like the ones in the bathroom in San Sebastián so she got out of there as quickly as she could. She tiptoed past Violet’s bedroom door. Everything was still and neat, so unlike her own flat at the moment, but it felt dead too, the kind of place where the ticking of the clock was the most exciting thing that ever happened. Poor Gilbert. On duty here for the rest of Violet’s life.

  A board creaked under her foot.

  ‘Goodbye, Grace,’ Violet said from the darkness of her room. ‘Please tell Tate, before he comes again, to get his hair cut.’

  CHAPTER 27

  Grace knew her descent down the slide had speeded up when, after going down her paint-splattered stairs on her way out to work, she found herself back in the kitchen moving the butter dish so that the china cow on top could see out of the window properly. Lining the cutlery up neatly, checking the plates were back in the cupboard in the right order, all those things she regularly did before going to work. But worrying whether a piece of china had a good view?

  Definitely a bad sign, although perhaps she should cut herself some slack. She had barely slept, just had a shower in cold water as her father had used all the hot for his bath, and undergone another interrogation about the position of the blinds in the gallery as ‘the gang’ felt they could have been used to transmit a signal. A phone call from Serafina, during which her father just kept saying, ‘Uh-hmm,’ was the only reason she had managed to escape down the stairs at all.

  And why was she bothering with what the cow could see anyway, when, knowing her father’s clumsiness, it would soon be getting a better view of the inside of the bin? There it could make friends with the various glasses, bowls and plates he’d managed to smash over the past few days. She was not sure how he’d managed to work loose the hour hand on the clock; he’d said he was demonstrating how the icon robbery was a work of split-second timing. That the clock in her flat had now stopped seemed to underline that nothing would ever change from here on – she was stuck with her father forever.

  At work, her office was beginning to look as messy as her flat. There were rocks scattered all across the floor and an assortment of plastic food had been arranged along the window sills – outsized prawns, bowls of noodles, a spring roll and some wontons. She assumed Tate had been through the bins of some Asian restaurant that had tired of displaying these solid representations of their fare in the window. Perhaps he had spent the time while Bernice and Sol were cornering Gilbert arranging them in a way that probably only made sense to him.

  In the kitchen she had stepped back, surprised by a shape leaning against the cabinets, but when she turned on the light she saw that it was the rainmaker in a plastic poncho.

  Alistair arrived, still in a rage about returning to the office the day before and finding she had given the key to Bernice to lock up. She suspected, however, that what he was really put out about was returning to the office to find people still in it. While he was haranguing her, he kept glancing at Tate’s chair and the rocks, the scarlet wall and the plastic food, and she knew he was angry about those too, but wouldn’t admit it.

  She let him rage and bluster and wondered when would be a good time to tell him that Gilbert might not be able to do his tour today. Never, probably.

  Her punishment seemed to be filing a load of crumpled bits of paper. Still, at least being busy might stop her falling asleep. Thinking about sleep allowed Tate and particularly that PS to slip into her mind. You should sleep more. It suits you. Had he sat and watched her before he went home? Her stomach did a shimmy at the idea. She tried to offset that by dwelling on how irresponsible he had been with Gilbert. Her stomach was still shimmying.

  Forget last night, Grace. Read the signs. Dad decamping to your flat, Mum taking up with Jay, Gilbert getting drunk, the arty-fartification of the office. Things are slipping away from you.

  She had barely smoothed out the first of the pieces of paper Alistair had given her when the phone rang and she heard the voice of a man whose vocal chords had been washed in vomit repeatedly the night before.

  ‘How are you feeling, Gilbert?’ she said softly.

  ‘As if I have been exhumed,’ he croaked back. ‘I think, dear girl, you had better put me through to Alistair. I can barely raise my head, let alone do a tour. Oh, and Grace, thank you for coming round last night … so grateful and so … ashamed, after what I said to you in the office …’

  She imagined him hunched over the phone with Violet listening in, even the sound of his own voice ricocheting through his head.

  ‘Forget it, Gilbert, you’ve suffered enough.’

  Alistair stalked back into Grace’s office when he had talked to Gilbert, looking florid and sulky, and said he didn’t suppose Grace could do Gilbert’s tour for him? When she said she had one of her own at twelve and another at 3.30, he went back into
his room, saying, ‘Damn, damn, damn.’ The outside door slamming a couple of minutes later was him leaving, she supposed. More weirdness.

  Grace went back to smoothing and filing. If she got a move on and the phones didn’t ring too much, she could get it done before she went out. She hauled out a file, put it all in order and started on another. Perhaps she wasn’t sliding; if she hemmed herself in with enough routine and hard work she could hang on. If she didn’t think about Tate, she could definitely win this battle.

  She heard the outside door open and someone barge into reception and throw themselves on the sofa. There was sobbing, so it definitely wasn’t Tate. She found her mother face down, her shoulders heaving. She was a small hillock of wobbly tweed.

  ‘Graaaaaace,’ she wailed, raising her chin off the sofa to do it. ‘Graaaaace, Graaaccce, Graaaace.’

  Grace got down on her knees and patted her mother’s back and the wailing gradually subsided into sniffing and the odd sob. Eventually Grace persuaded her mother to sit up. It was a mistake: now it was possible to see her face, bloated and ruddy, devoid of any of her usual make-up. Someone had put a hand-whisk in her hair and turned it to full power.

  ‘Take some deep breaths,’ Grace said, ‘have a go at telling me what’s wrong.’

  ‘I … I …’ Felicity was stuck in a cycle of gulps and juddering breaths that had to run its course before she could speak. Grace went to fetch some tissues from her bag. Eventually her mother managed to say, ‘He’s taken the money, Grace. Taken the money and buggered off.’

  ‘Jay?’

  Intense nodding. More sobbing.

  ‘Taken? But how, Mum? Taken what? You haven’t even applied for your bank loan—’

  ‘I had savings,’ her mother said tersely. ‘I’m not a complete idiot. I’ve always had money for an emergency. Running-away money, just in case. A bit skimmed off the family allowance when you were all growing up, a couple of quid here and there. It’s mounted up. I’ve been careful.’ The thought of how careful she had once been obviously collided with the knowledge of how stupid she was now and produced a fresh bout of sobbing. It allowed Grace to go over what her mother had just said while fighting the urge to say, I told you he was a bad bet.